CarBrandLogos archive · Porsche · 1977
The front-engined V8 grand tourer built to replace the 911, and outlived by it.
Discover the storyPhoto: MrWalkr · CC BY-SA 4.0
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Porsche 928, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
In the early 1970s Porsche's management concluded the 911 was finished. Rear-engined, air-cooled and increasingly hard to reconcile with American safety and emissions legislation, it looked like a dead end. The 928, launched in May 1977, was the company's clean-sheet answer: a front-engined, water-cooled V8 grand tourer that did everything the 911 did in a more conventional and more comfortable way.
Porsche 928 GTS hl blue · Stahlkocher · CC BY-SA 3.0
02
The engineering was excellent. A 4.5-litre V8, growing to 5.4 litres over the car's life, sat at the front with the transmission mounted at the rear for weight distribution. The rear suspension incorporated the Weissach axle, a geometry that used compliance in the bushings to induce a small amount of passive rear-wheel steer under lifting, countering the trailing-throttle instability that afflicted fast cars of the period. Anatole Lapine's studio, with Wolfgang Mobius, produced a shape with exposed pop-up headlamps and body-coloured bumpers that looked like nothing else on the road and dated remarkably slowly.
1987 Porsche 928 S4 rear · The Car Spy · CC BY 2.0
03
Europe named it Car of the Year for 1978, the only sports car ever to take that award. The problem was that Porsche's customers did not want it instead of a 911. It was heavier, more expensive, and lacked the older car's nervous edge, which turned out to be the thing people were buying.
Bruxelles Autoworld Special 70 Years of Porsche 53 · Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0
04
Production ended in 1995 after 61,056 cars, with the 911 still in production and still selling. The 928 is now recognised as one of the best-engineered cars of its era, and as evidence that a company can be entirely right about the engineering and entirely wrong about the customer.
At a glance
Units built
61,056Engine
4.5 L Porsche V8 engines#Type M28Designer
Wolfgang MöbiusTechnical specification
Badge at launch
This is the marque emblem that accompanied the 928's era. The full identity timeline is documented in the brand archive.
Explore the logo history →From the journal
Contemporaries from the 1970s
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